The Juliette Society

12

If you’ve never heard of the Fuck Factory, you probably wouldn’t know that it, or even a place like it, existed.

And even if you’ve already guessed from the name what kind of place it is – which, let’s face it, probably isn’t too hard – you likely wouldn’t have any idea what goes on inside.

Not in your wildest imagination.

If you never knew it existed, you had no idea what went on there, you’re probably better off not knowing. But you got this far so, what the hell, I’m going to tell you anyway.

It’s a sex club. The most notorious underground sex club of its time.

If, by some slim chance, you have heard of the Fuck Factory and wanted to go, but don’t know where it is, don’t try looking for it because you will never ever find it.

Anna and I are standing outside an abandoned, half-demolished warehouse in a section of the city that I’ve never been to before. That I had no reason to ever come to. That no one has any reason to come to.

Even the cab driver who brought us here had no idea where he was going and drove around in circles for twenty minutes trying to find exactly the right derelict warehouse, when there’s nothing else but warehouses, rows and rows of them. For some reason, the streets around here don’t have names. No streets or avenues, no North, West, East or South. Just a string of numbers, like the girls on Anna’s website.

But we’re here now. The moon is hanging low in the sky, there’s a chill in the air that’s pretty unusual for this time of year and I’m freezing my ass off in a denim shirt, knotted in the front across my midriff, Daisy Dukes that are riding so far up the crack of my ass I might as well be wearing chaps, bare legs and stiletto heels that make it next to impossible to maintain a steady footing on the rubble under my feet. I’m standing on a street corner, looking like a hooker, and feeling pretty damn exposed.

Jack and I are on hiatus. To me, that just sounds like a fancy way of saying ‘we’re breaking up.’ But it’s worse. It hurts like a break-up but without the closure.

Anna calls and asks if I want to come with her to the Fuck Factory and there’s no one to stop me. What does Jack expect me to do? Sit at home and feel sorry for myself? That’s not me.

The Fuck Factory is Anna’s favorite club. The only place where she says she really feels at home, at peace and among her own kind. She says she wants to take me there so that I’ll understand her a little better and why she does the things she does.

Tonight, it’s Black and Blue Night, which Anna had to assure me three or four times wasn’t the way our bodies would look by the time we walked out of there.

She told me, ‘It’s a dress code, silly.’

Leather and denim. And strictly nothing else. No cotton, no rayon, no polyester or spandex.

But I cheated.

I put on a bra and panties underneath the denim.

And Anna doesn’t know. Or if she does, she’s not letting on.

She came over to my apartment. We got ready together and she brought something for me too, because we’re about the same size. And Anna was adamant that I had to stick to the dress code. She said, ‘You’ve got to play by the rule. It’s the only rule there is.’

And I was adamant that, dress code be damned, my modesty would prevail. So I put them on when she wasn’t looking.

She made me look at myself in the mirror, while she stood behind with her hands on my hips and a satisfied smile on her face that said, job well done. All I could think was, I look kind of cheap and slutty, like the way young female movie stars have to dress if they want to make the cover of Maxim, but Anna looked at me and said, ‘I’d fuck you.’

Right after that, I made an excuse to go to the bathroom and that’s when I put my underwear back on – a thong and my demi-cup bra. I checked my ass in the bathroom mirror to make sure the panties couldn’t be seen and did up one extra button of the shirt, so the cleavage was still visible but its support was not.

Anna played by the rule. She picked out a black leather catsuit that fits her like a second skin. It has a zip that runs from the neck all the way down the front and disappears between her legs. She couldn’t wear underwear even if she wanted to, because it would show and ruin the effect. And anyway, she has it open almost all the way to the navel and her tits are half-exposed.

As she touched up her makeup, I asked her what I should expect.

‘It’s not a society ball,’ she said. ‘It’s a place where people go to fuck. You look around, you scope out what’s going on, what you like the look of, and you get into a scene. It’s no big deal.’

Anna tells me the Fuck Factory is legendary. It’s been around since before she was born. And busted more times than Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton combined for almost any health and safety statute you’d care to mention, even the most minor infractions, anything that could provide a pretext. And every time it’s busted, the club moves to a different location and starts afresh, further away from the rest of polite society, further away from civilization, where it can exist without fear of harassment or prosecution.

Now, it’s moved here.

If there was a place called Nowhere, this is probably what it would look like. A war zone. Like those photos you see of some battle-scarred city in some territory on the other side of the world that seems to be in a permanent state of conflict. Or the long-forgotten ruins of a lost civilization. A city that’s long been abandoned. Streets that are empty. Buildings bombed-out and barely standing. No inhabitants. No sign of life.

That’s what it feels like here. Spooky and eerie. We’re two girls standing on a deserted street at the edge of the city. There’s nothing to indicate that there’s a club here. No signage. No people. Nothing to suggest there’s anything here at all. Except something that looks like graffiti. As primitive as a paleolithic cave painting. Or something someone might have drawn on a bathroom wall.

A cartoon penis and balls, spurting four large teardrops of come.

White stains on a dirty black wall. Below that, a pair of legs raised in the air, in a v-shape, like devil’s horns. It reminds me of the way Anna’s legs were strung up when she was tied to the toilet in that video. And between the legs, a hole. A crudely drawn vagina. With teeth. Lots of small sharp pointed teeth. Below that there’s an arrow, pointing down, to a steep, stone staircase that leads below the street.

As we head down the stairs, into the gloom, I imagine what it must smell like in the Fuck Factory. Maybe like an old basement dive bar, wet and moldy and sweet from all the alcohol consumed in such a confined space. With every step, I can feel an air of mystery and deviance brewing around us.

At the bottom we’re confronted by an unmarked black door, like the door to the underworld. Anna knocks twice then pauses and knocks again three times. And it opens. And when it opens there’s not a whole lot more light inside than out. Just a half-light so dim that your eyes need time to adjust to it. A shadowy, hulking figure, the kind of man mountain you always find working the door at a club, ushers us inside without saying a word.

I follow Anna down a long thin corridor, with walls so close that we can only walk in single file, like a passage in a catacomb, then down two more flights of stairs. We’re under the city now. And it feels like we’re so far down that we’ve burrowed through the earth into a section of hell.

We’re in front of a large steel door painted dirty green. Anna knocks again and it swings open, held by another man mountain.

The first thing that hits me is the smell. And instead of the faint smell of alcohol and mold, this place smells like sex – the smell of hot bodies colliding and combining.

The second thing that hits me is the heat. Wet and humid. The kind of heat that makes you break into a sweat the second you step into it.

The third thing is the sound. Techno. Because what’s a club without techno and, specifically, German techno. German gabber techno at ear-destroying volumes. The perfect sense-disorientating, high-velocity fuck music.

We walk into a large rectangular room with brick walls, a bar all along one side and a ceiling so low it seems as if I could reach out and touch it. It’s packed with every kind of freak you could imagine; those who are freakish in appearance and others who are just freakish by nature, in behavior, all congregating and in some form of congress, whatever that may be. It feels as if all the social misfits of the world have been drawn here. They don’t know why. They just know that this is their place. Where they won’t be judged or condemned or looked at strangely. Where they can indulge in whatever their particular peccadillo is.

Two large cages sit on either side of the bar, the kind you’d keep a hamster in but larger, much larger. One contains a naked girl, the other a guy. There’s a tray for food and a feeding bottle attached to the bars; both empty. A midget, wearing a top hat and nothing else, is standing on the bar throwing peanuts through the bars of the cage at the girl.

Opposite the bar there are several arched passageways that lead off into other areas of the club.

‘That’s where all the real action goes on,’ Anna tells me. ‘But once you leave this room it’s like a labyrinth. You can easily get lost and it feels like you’ll never find your way out.’

I look around and I tell myself that this is like every club scene you’ve ever seen in a movie. There’s loud, pounding music, it’s dark and populated by freaky-looking people who don’t look like regular people, who barely even look human. And the protagonist is frantically searching for something or somebody vital to their quest but clearly doesn’t belong there. Clearly doesn’t even want to be there.

And, at the same time, this is a club scene like you’ve never seen in a movie, like you will never see in any movie. Because club scenes in movies are made by people who have likely never set foot in a real club. They’ve just recreated one for their stupid movie so the hero can wander through it looking totally weirded-out by the strange freaks with no fashion sense whatsoever, who are dancing like loons to some of the worst club music you’ve ever heard in your life.

The people who make club scenes in movies have likely never set foot in this club, or any club like it. The Fuck Factory is a place where people are defined only by their kinks, their fetishes and their desires. Nothing else matters. Nobody cares whether you’re young or old, who you are or what you do in the real world, whether you’re a janitor or a CEO.

Anna says, ‘I want you to meet Kubrick,’ and she pulls me towards an older man leaning against the bar. Kubrick is the manager-proprietor of the Fuck Factory. Not Stanley, Larry – but everyone just calls him Kubrick. He is short, fat, Jewish, camp and bald. Because if life’s going to deal you one bum card, it’s probably going to deal you the whole deck. But Kubrick doesn’t seem to mind. He’s happy as Larry.

Kubrick has a friendly smile and a tactile manner, but he looks pretty harmless. He has a long snow-white beard, a curtain of downy white hair all over his body, down his arms and over his chest, covering his belly, which is the size and shape of a beach ball, and not flabby but hard and taut like muscle. He looks like Santa Claus. If Santa Claus had ditched the big red fur-trimmed coat for a black leather jerkin and had the word SADIST carved into his bare chest.

Kubrick has the word SADIST carved into his chest and it looks someone put it there with a can opener. It’s written in large jagged letters that stretch across his torso, between his neck and his nipples. And I wonder if he really is, or if he just got his wires crossed, because it must have hurt like holy hell.

The Fuck Factory is Kubrick’s place, his creation, his happening. A pansexual laboratory of carnal pleasure where anything and everything goes. There are things going on in here that, hard as it is to believe, you won’t even find on the internet.

If you’re going to name your club the Fuck Factory, you’d better make pretty damn sure it lives up to its name. Kubrick seems pretty confident it does because he welcomes me, saying, ‘I’m telling you, sweetheart, this is the greatest sex club in the world. The greatest sex club there’s ever been.’

Kubrick calls me sweetheart. He calls Anna ‘this one’.

Kubrick’s big meaty arms are wrapped around Anna’s waist and he’s pulling her into him so her breasts smoosh against his chest. He has upper arms like hambones and forearms like Popeye. On one arm, I can see a faded blue sailor tattoo; on the other, some strange-looking sigil or pictogram that, try as I might, I can’t work out what it is.

He gives Anna a squeeze and says, ‘This one, she doesn’t know when to stop.’

Then he laughs and casually slaps her on the ass. And she’s not expecting it so she jumps with a start and then giggles.

Anna puts her hand on my chest and says, ‘It’s Catherine’s first time.’

‘It is?’ says Kubrick, in mock surprise. Then, looking at me, ‘You’ve got nothing to worry about, sweetheart. We’re all friends down here.’

I’m not so sure about that, but Kubrick sounds sincere.

‘Just look within yourself,’ he says, ‘follow what your heart desires and your body craves. And you will find it.’

Kubrick’s suddenly come over all zen and he’s giving me life advice like a New Age guru. He has his hands clasped together in front of him as he talks, so he’s even starting to look like a guru.

‘There’s no big secret,’ he says. ‘All you need to know in life to get some head is that everyone needs to fuck or be fucked. That’s it.’

It’s not exactly Deepak Chopra, but I think I get his drift.

Kubrick’s philosophy, simply put, is this:

Come one, come all.

Fuck one, fuck all.

Fuck whomever you want, however you want.

And that is the whole of the law.

‘Just one word of caution,’ says Kubrick, leaning into me and indicating behind. ‘Stay away from the midget.’

I look over Kubrick’s shoulder at the midget, who’s now on top of the cage, on all fours, growling like a dog. And the girl is curled up in one corner of it on a bed of straw.

Why? I say, he looks harmless enough.

‘He’s really horny,’ says Kubrick. ‘And he may not have much to work with but that doesn’t stop him trying.

‘The thing about midgets is they’re all super-macho and never do anything in half-measures. So they usually either want to beat themselves up because they’re so small or they want to fuck the world. And this one, he’s a real sadist.’

I look over again and now the midget’s holding himself up with one arm, like he’s about to do one-arm press-ups, holding his cock with the other, and pissing through the bars of the cage. The poor girl is scurrying back and forth on her hands and knees trying to avoid the spray and not doing a very good job of it.

I must look shocked because Anna says to me, ‘Don’t worry, that’s part of her kick. She wouldn’t be there otherwise.’

‘OK, kids,’ Kubrick says, clapping his hands together like a summer camp counselor, ‘I have a club to run and people to fuck. Have fun.’

He hops down off the bar stool and we watch him scurry away, off down a passage like the White Rabbit.

Anna turns to me and says, ‘You’d never guess what Kubrick did before this.’

I have no idea, I say.

‘Guess,’ she says.

‘Life coach?’

‘No.’

‘Fitness instructor.’

Anna shakes her head.

‘Librarian.’

‘Nope.’

‘Anesthetist.’

She laughs.

I smile, ‘I give up,’ I say. ‘What?’

‘Accountant.’

I try to imagine Kubrick in a three-piece suit poring over ledgers in an office. And fail miserably.

‘Not just any accountant,’ she says. Then leans into me and whispers, ‘C–I–A.’

The way Anna tells it, back when Kubrick was an accountant, he was living a pretty normal life. House in the ’burbs, married. Healthy, regular sex life, no kids.

But Kubrick had a secret. He used to sneak off to the garage and jerk off over beefcake mags. It’s not that he was pretending he was straight when he was really gay, or that he was more of one than the other. He just found himself bored of the sex he had with his wife and was looking for a new kick.

He started thinking about what else could get him off. He decided to let his imagination really fly and see where it would take him. He started collecting catalogues.

Not underwear catalogues. That would be far too obvious, too easy. Catalogues of garden furniture, of seeds and cereals and grains, of dental instruments, of woods and metals and concrete. He followed his whims and collected whatever tickled his fancy. He would look at the photos and he found out that he was pretty adept at constructing detailed sexual fantasies around inanimate objects, the more mundane the better, because Kubrick was training himself to sexualize the world around him.

He figured that was a world that would be a far more exciting place to live in, that it would take him out of the drudgery of his government desk job, his normal suburban life. It would be far more exciting than even beating off to beefcake magazines in the garage after dinner.

This is how Kubrick found his calling. As a fetishist.

One thing led to another and soon Kubrick had a whole library of the most bizarre beat-off material anyone’s ever seen. A library that to anyone else just looked like the kind of eccentric collection of books you’d find at a flea market or Goodwill. Soon there was no more room in the garage to house the collection, but it meant so much to him that, instead of moving it or paring it down, he decided to sell his car.

One day, Kubrick got to talking with one of his co-workers about his collection and they both realized they had something in common. They both realized they were living a lie. They decided to start a club to pursue their interests.

At first, they would meet in a room deep in the recesses of the building after work hours. There were only a handful of them and they would just sit around with a beer, each discussing their fantasies in turn for the others – like group therapy but for sadists and perverts. It was all very sedate and civilized. Until, one evening, as Kubrick was relating a particularly lurid sex fantasy involving a hosepipe, a sprinkler and a pile of manure, a guy sitting opposite him, who was new to the group, pulled out his penis and started to jerk off in front of everyone else. Instead of stopping to tell him to zip up, Kubrick carried on, incredulous. Now he had a new challenge. He wanted to see if he could get this guy off.

As he continued, the other guys in the room also started to unzip and soon Kubrick found himself in the position of trying to help them all, stimulating them to orgasm solely through the power of his imagination. And, to him, this was like the greatest kick of all. Way better than simply beating off over catalogues of cleaning products and jewelry and power tools.

The next time they met, a few of the guys brought their secretaries and interns. As Kubrick sat in the middle of the circle and told them stories, they started doing a lot more than just jerking off in front of each other. Kubrick’s little gathering very quickly turned into a support group for sex addicts where more sex was encouraged, not less. People started bringing props and dressing up. The scenes they acted out became more elaborate and involved.

As word got out and more and more government employees wanted to join, things started to get out of hand. It was getting harder and harder to keep it a secret. Around the same time, Kubrick decided he’d had enough of cooking the books for the government so they could prosecute dirty wars in far-flung territories across the world, then point at the accountants and claim plausible denial. He decided he wanted to devote his energies to his real passion, helping people to discover and activate their kinks.

I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing so I stop Anna there and say, ‘Are you telling me that’s how the Fuck Factory started? As an after-hours sex club in the Pentagon?’

‘I guess,’ says Anna. She doesn’t say anything after that for a few seconds, as if she’s deep in thought. Then she says, ‘You know, the strangest people work in government.’

Kubrick still has pretty good connections, Anna tells me.

‘You wouldn’t believe the kind of people that come here,’ she says.

I wait for her to tell me who but she doesn’t, and I don’t ask because I’m not sure I want to know. It’s not just the combination of those two statements that unnerves me, but the totality of everything she’s just revealed to me about the executive branch and what really goes on behind closed doors of government.

I’m inside the Fuck Factory and I feel like Al Pacino in Cruising. I’m Al Pacino pretending to be gay. And giving off all the wrong signals.

Yellow rag in the left back pocket. You like to piss on.

Yellow rag in the right back pocket. You like to be pissed on.

Without even realizing I’m giving any signals, I clock this guy staring at me from the other end of the bar. Young, blond, bare-chested, muscular, and obscenely good-looking with a page boy haircut that would look ridiculous on anyone else, but on him, with a body like that, seems just perfect – the way male models can pull off the most outrageous look and be so self-possessed they still command your attention. He’s leaning with his back to the bar, his elbows on the counter, legs at a forty-five degree angle in front of him, the better to show off the huge bulge in his leather pants.

He’s really not my type and I’m not even into blonds, but he carries himself with such supreme confidence and poise that I can’t stop looking. And I can see that’s exactly what he wants.

He looks at me coldly, like a lion watching its prey waiting for the time to pounce. He’s hunting me without moving an inch. He wants me to know that he’s there, that he’s affecting me, controlling me with his look.

And I want him to know that I’m not easy, that I’m not alone and have back-up, so I turn around to talk to Anna. But she’s not there any more. I scan the room frantically, but I can’t see her anywhere. I look back. He’s still staring at me and now he knows that I’m defenseless and have nowhere to hide. Before he makes his move, I decide to seek refuge in the bathroom, hoping I might find Anna there too.

Now, ordinarily, this would be a great move because a ladies’ room is like a convent, a sanctuary offering protection for the fairer sex, where confessions can be made, secrets can be aired, and men are definitely not allowed.

There’s only one problem. This bathroom is unisex. And it’s not so much a bathroom, as an excuse for water sports and anonymous sex. In the center there’s a trough tailor-made for people to either piss in or bathe in or both – and that’s exactly what’s happening. Bathroom stalls line each side of the room, something like twenty or thirty of them, and they all have holes in the doors – like the holes in Marcus’ closet – and body parts either sticking through or pressed against them. It takes me a split second to look around, take this all in and realize this isn’t the kind of refuge I was seeking.

I step out of the bathroom, into the dimly lit corridor that leads back into the main room of the club, and he’s there, waiting for me, in a recess shrouded in semi-darkness.

I don’t see him at first but as I pass, his hand shoots out and grabs my forearm.

He pulls me into him. I don’t resist. I let him take me.

And he whirls me around so I’m up against the wall.

His hands are on my waist, holding me, his lower body pressed against mine.

He kisses me on the lips, while his hand glides over my body, around my back and up to my shoulder.

He leans in to nuzzle me and somehow finds this magic spot, right on the ridge of my neck, almost midway between the collarbone and the ear, an erogenous zone that opens me up like a puzzle box. And it feels so good that just before the dopamine hits my brain, I catch myself thinking, how did he do that?

He buries his nose behind my ear, drawing in my scent. His lips, soft and moist, fix themselves to my neck, the tongue circling, searching, then slowly tracing the curve up to my ear, and curling down inside the rim, leaving a thin sheen of saliva in its wake. Teasing beneath the lobe, then flicking it and biting down just enough for me to feel the sharpness of his teeth.

I let out a moan. He’s in my ear, whispering, ‘you like that.’ But it’s more of an observation than an inquiry, because he already knows what he’s doing, where he’s taking me, and how to lower my defenses, one by one.

He plunges his tongue deep inside the crevice, thrusting, probing, making it wet. And I moan again, now dizzy with pleasure and abandon, my body trembling with anticipation for the next touch.

Instead, he makes me wait as he maneuvers me further back into the alcove. Back where it’s dark and private and we can’t be seen. And he lifts me up so I’m perched on a thin shelf that runs along the back wall at waist height.

My feet are barely touching the ground. My heels scrabble to find a hold and I have to brace myself and lean against the wall to stop from falling forward.

The wall is wet with sweat. As if all the heat and humidity has become trapped in this one little pocket of the club. But it’s also cold and clammy and I stick to it and it feels so good because I’m burning up inside.

And now he has me in a place where he knows I’m vulnerable and my resistance is down, I can sense his ardor increasing. He’s becoming bolder, less decorous.

His lust is off the leash.

His mouth is on mine again and his kisses are more forceful now. Using lips and tongue and teeth.

His hands are all over me. One running up through my hair, the other up inside my shirt, reaching for my bra. Kneading and squeezing one breast through the cup. Fingers brushing and pinching the nipple.

I can feel the blood rush in. Tightening and hardening it. Making the nipple so sensitive that I have to stop myself from crying out as the cotton grazes against it.

I can feel my breath getting shorter. Hear my fervor as I moan. And it makes me even more excited.

He kicks my feet apart, parts my legs with his knee and slides his thigh up against my crotch. His groin is up against my thigh. And I can feel his hardness pressing into me. I raise my leg and slide my pelvis forward so he can move deeper between my legs.

I’m right on the edge and the shelf is cutting deep into my ass, and it hurts so much, but I don’t care because he’s riding me with his thigh now, pressing it hard against me.

I put my hands flat on his chest and brace myself so I can grind down harder. And it feels so good that I think I’m going to lose my mind and I know I’ve lost control.

Instead, I think I must have blacked out from the heat and the pleasure and the pain. Because suddenly, I can see myself. I can see him on top of me. And I am outside my body.

The knot of my denim shirt is undone and hanging open.

My bra is unclasped at the front and hangs loose from my shoulders.

My breasts are exposed and slick with sweat. The nipples pink and swollen.

My shorts are hanging off one leg. The other is curled around his back.

His hand is in my panties. I’m wet and squirming to his touch.

And then it feels like I’ve just woken up because everything is fuzzy and indistinct, and the music sounds so distant.

But I clearly hear him say, ‘Not such a good girl after all.’

He’s telling me something I don’t want to know about myself. And I think he’s mocking me.

The laugh that comes in its wake sounds smug and leering, a slap in the face, and I come crashing back to earth again. I’m fully in my body. I’m naked and ashamed and I don’t want it anymore, not here, not now, not like this.

I raise my head to look past him, over his shoulder, and that’s when I realize that we’re not alone any more.

There are eight or nine leather boys; and when I say leather boys, I mean leather boys – the kind you’d see in a seventies gay porn film. Inordinately beautiful men, slim and toned. They are crowded into the entrance of the alcove, two or three deep. The ones at the back are craning their necks, pushing and shoving to get a better view.

The three at the front are leaning back into them to hold their ground, to hold the distance between us and them. They are all stripped to the waist with their pants hanging open at the crotch, their balls hanging obscenely over the fly of their pants, below thick, black, bushy curls of pubic hair, and their big rough, sweaty hands defiantly stroking hard, indelicate cocks.

I’m totally thrown and really freaked out because I can’t work out if they’re jerking off over me or over him.

‘I can’t do this,’ I say, and push him off weakly. ‘Really, I have to go.’ I can hear my voice crack with emotion, ‘I have to find my friend.’

And it’s like when a director yells ‘Cut’ and the scene breaks. I’ve killed the mood, they all start to peel away in search of another scene, one that will be more satisfying, and I quickly dress and right myself and push past them, wordlessly.

I hurry down a passageway, shaking and exhausted and excited all at the same time, trying to make sense of what the hell just happened. Part of me wanted to go all the way but I just couldn’t let myself go and I got scared, like when you get on a white knuckle ride at an amusement park and you suddenly realize where you are and tense up, and the thrill turns to fear.

And now I’m searching for Anna.

I think I’m heading back to the main room, back to the bar, when I’m going in the opposite direction entirely. And I realize Anna was right, this place is like a labyrinth. All the passages look the same. Two, three turns and I’m utterly lost. I keep on the same direction, thinking that I’m going to recognize some feature or other, then realize that I don’t. And then just as I think I’m never going to find my way back, I turn another corner and I see Anna. I could hardly miss her. I’ve walked into a large cavernous room teeming with people, all moving as one, all thinking as one, acting on instinct as they cruise and watch and fuck.

And there’s a film projected on the entire back wall of the room, maybe thirty foot high and forty foot wide, of Anna. One of her clips from the SODOM website. At least, I assume it’s from the website because it’s not one I’ve seen before. She’s topless and blindfolded with a black T-shirt tied around her head. But it’s still unmistakably Anna. I recognize the same shoulder-length blonde hair, I recognize her body.

She’s sitting on a bench that’s little more than several planks of splintered, unvarnished timber nailed into each other with no concern for comfort or stability. Her arms are extended along the back, in a crucifixion pose, tied along its length by loops of thick rope, and more tied tightly around her body; one above her breasts and one around her waist.

I don’t know what happened in the video before this, but Anna’s torso is flushed red, as if she’s been whipped. Her head is slumped forward, her jaw is hanging open and she’s drooling. A long, thick gob of spit hangs lazily from the corner of her mouth and hangs down between her breasts, where the lashes look red and raw and really painful, and her chest is heaving up and down like she’s just run a marathon.

I’m looking at Anna on the screen and I see Séverine, blindfolded and tied to that tree, and I realize that they’re one and the same – two fatal blondes chained to their desires.

I turn away and I see Anna again – the real Anna – crouching naked on a platform in front of her video image. She’s a star of stage and screen. And the reason I didn’t see her at first is that she’s surrounded by a swarm of guys, all trying to get near her like autograph hunters crowding an ingénue at her first big movie premiere. Instead of offering her paper and pen, they’re waving their cocks in her face as she grabs at them, making sure that all of them get what they came for and none of them are disappointed.

Anna’s body glistens with sweat and come. Her face is radiant and alive. She has that look on her face again, the one I saw in the video of her with the drilldo, that same look of ecstatic pleasure.

I’m standing there, taking all this in, and it’s one thing to see this stuff on video. It’s something else entirely to see it in front of your eyes; you’re watching this happening to your best friend and it’s like you’re watching it happen to yourself.

That’s what I think of when I see Anna hemmed in by all these frenzied horny guys, stripped of her clothes, her defenses, her boundaries. I recognize myself. Anna looks so comfortable and relaxed, without a care in the world, entirely assured of herself and her body, her capabilities. In the midst of chaos but completely in control. And getting off from it. I’m getting turned on just from watching her. I finally realize that’s where I want to be too, that from here on in, nothing will ever be the same. I’ll never be the same again. I’ve finally crossed over.